Student Blog

Bean Boozled by @zochi9

This year I spent New Year’s with my family. I don’t see them very often and as they were only here for few days, I tried to make the most of it. But how do you make the most of every minute when everyone is completely glued to their gadgets? All unwilling to break their gaze from their tablets, phones and the tv. I wasn’t prepared to have a boring New Year’s Eve.

The day before New Year’s Eve

For those of you who aren’t familiar with ‘Bean Boozled’, it is probably one of the most deadly games I’ve ever played. It’s really a two player game. You have a box different flavoured jelly beans, some good and some not so good. Both players eat the same coloured jelly bean at the same time. It’s only once you’ve chewed that you realise how much you regret playing.

From experience, you go pale, you look tired, you feel sick and you lose your appetite. When you do feel the rare urge to eat, the after taste remains and puts you off for at least a few days.

Every time I try to get friends to play Bean Boozled once describing it, they point blank refuse for obvious reasons. So this time I wasn’t prepared to explain it at all.

I came downstairs with the box of Jelly beans and offered them to my aunt and uncle. My plan could have easily failed if they had refused, but they didn’t. They each chose a jelly bean as I sat anxiously waiting (without trying to look so intent) for their faces to turn. It was painfully frustrating as they both got lucky and unknowingly chose good ones. I offered again and insisted they have another one. This time one of them got the dog food and the other got skunk spray. Their faces screwed up and despite my laughing they both actually believed that the beans just went a little bad; so they both tried some more! This time I got lucky, I could enjoy watching their reactions once more; this time with puke and wet wipe flavoured -Let me just say that I know that it sounds pretty twisted and yes it probably is –After only a few chews, they both jumped up and ran to the kitchen to get rid of the remains. They both have a great sense of humour and weren’t too distressed by the experience and of my own enjoyment. But they sadly refused all of my other attempts to get them to have some more jelly beans.

New Year’s Eve

So the problem I had was to figure out how I was going to get them to unwillingly eat some more very bad jelly beans that they had no intention of eating, just for my own amusement. Again, I figured out that what they didn’t know wouldn’t hurt.

Plus it might just solve the problem of breaking their attention away from their beloved technology, if only for a little while.

I decided that I would carefully hide the jelly beans within some Quality Street chocolate and offer them out. It wasn’t too difficult and once you have the jelly been inside and wrap it up neatly, you’d have no idea anything was any different. I just had to sit and wait patiently once more.